How much you need to earn to be part of the 1 percent

To be a 1 percenter, you need to have an adjusted gross income of at least $480,930, according to the latest data from the Internal Revenue Service, which looked at income statistics for tax year 2015. The top 1 percent accounted for 1.4 million individual income tax returns — out of 141.2 million total — that year.

If that income cutoff isn’t dispiriting enough, to be part of the top 0.1 percent, which represented 141,205 returns in 2015, your adjusted gross income needed to be at least $2.2 million. Entry to the top 0.01 percent, representing 14,120 returns, required adjusted gross income of $11.9 million or more.

The top 0.001 percent had adjusted gross income of at least $59.4 million that tax year. Just 1,412 returns came from those taxpayers.

In comparison, the adjusted gross income for the top 50 percent of individual income tax returns was $39,275. (See chart below; click to enlarge.)